Artist Talk—Ann Maria Healy & Kris Dittel

Time: 5.30pm Thursday 8th November 2018

Venue: Pallas Projects/Studios

Admission free - All welcome - No booking required

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Join the artist Ann Maria Healy for the conversation with Netherlands based editor and curator Kris Dittel, the script editor of When Dealers Are Shamans as they discuss Healy's exhibition When Dealers Are Shamans that we will launch on the day at Pallas Projects/Studios.

When Dealers Are Shamans is a video installation which arose out of collecting discarded medication trays whilst walking around Dublin city. The majority of these trays are the remnants of a drug called Zopiclone, a prescribed hypnotic agent or sleeping pill which is often sold illegally. When Dealers Are Shamans contemplates our desire to occupy a dream state through modalities such as medication. Amidst the North Inner City, the dealers of Zopiclone are shamans giving access points to places where unconscious thought may have become forbidden or repressed. Creating this work Healy partakes in a shamanic journey, to find her own spirit animal, but instead finds a partly lost soul in George the peacock.

Kris Dittel is an independent editor and curator based in Rotterdam, as well as associate curator at the Onomatopee project space and publishing house in Eindhoven. Her work is informed by her background in economics, social sciences, and by her interest in forms of communication and the relation between textual and visual language. She is the editor of several publications, exploring the format of the book as an artistic medium.

Ann Maria Healy is a visual artist based in Dublin. Her practice is concerned with reoccurrence, the power of history and narratives embedded within the human psyche. Her work expresses itself through sculptural, video and textual form. Healy is currently on residency at Fire Station Artists’ Studios 2017-20. Selected exhibitions include ‘Futures: Series 3 Episode 1’, Royal Hibernian Academy (2017). ‘I like to eat with my hands’, Wexford Arts Centre (2016). ‘Your ass protrudes toward the malaise’, Eight Gallery, Dublin (2015). Previous residencies include Cow House Studios, Wexford (2015) and The Banff Centre, Canada (2014). Healy is an MFA graduate of The Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam (2014) and a recipient of the Irish Arts Council, Visual Artist Bursary Award (2016).

Louisa Casas (left) and Ann Ensor (right) at their 'Matter Has No Destiny' exhibition, 2018

Ann Ensor & Louisa Casas, from Matter Has No Destiny, 2018. Image courtesy of the artists.

Artist Talk—Ann Ensor & Louisa Casas—Matter Has No Destiny

Time: 6–7pm Thursday 1st November 2018

Venue: Pallas Projects/Studios

Admission free - All welcome - No booking required

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Join the artists Ann Ensor and Louisa Casas for their conversation responding to their exhibition Matter Has No Destiny with fellow artists and members of a New Materialism reading group HEAVY WEATHER. This will be an open discussion referring specifically to a text Contingency and Complexity by Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani. Participation is encouraged and welcome.

The text is available to download from the link bellow, also the copies of the text will be available at the gallery.

HEAVY WEATHER is a reading group, initiated by artist Emma McKeagney, of peer artists who are interested in New Materialism as a driving force for artistic practice with common interests in materiality and allowing material to drive artistic process symbiotically alongside conceptual idea. New Materialism is a large and all encompassing frame of mind, but it comes down to moving away from the belief that humans dominate a hierarchy of matter; breaking down this notion it also questions what presumptions we have collectively taken on board while this belief has been the hegemonic one.

Deconstruct to Reconstruct is a live performance by the artist duo in collaboration with Celina Muldoon. As a closing event for the duo's current exhibition at Pallas Projects/Studios, Beyond the Sandy Suburbs, this performance is a direct response to the installation. The artists are using materials that they've incorporated in the exhibition.

Beyond the Sandy Suburbs is the final in a trilogy of works produced by Ella Bertilsson (SWE/IE) and Ulla Juske (EST/IE) and based upon research conducted during residencies in Draíocht (Blanchardstown) and the Nordic Artists’ Centre (Norway). The series, which began with 11.9km Northwest of the City Centre (Hobusepea Gallery, Tallinn) and continued with Carriers of Memories (Draíocht) has dealt so far with themes of domesticity, paranoia and displacement. The Sandy Suburbs continues along those lines of thought and begins to invoke power dynamics and the urban environment more directly.

Ella Bertilsson (SWE/IRE) and Ulla Juske (EST/IRE) moved, separately, to Dublin during the years of the Celtic Tiger, and ultimately met in 2013, during their time as MFA students in the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Since then the artist-duo (SWE/IRE & EST/IRE) have been using conversation as the generative ground for their multidisciplinary work; sourcing inspiration from films, music, news items, oral histories and interviews; and producing work that uses storytelling, symbolism, staging and sound to produce a mood of absurdity, disquiet and unresolved suspense. This atmosphere is fuelled by the tension in the telling of the narratives, which can indicate something unsaid, be it by verbal feint, communicative noise, distraction or omission. Thematically, the work matches questions of domesticity with questions of memory and personal history, moving to remind the viewer of the associated essences, realities, and dissonances.

Artist Talk—Sibyl Montague & Rachael Gilbourne

Time: 6.30pm Friday 7th September

Venue: Pallas Projects/Studios

No booking required - free event - all welcome

Join the artist Sibyl Montague who has invited curator Rachael Gilbourne for a conversation in the gallery as they discuss Montague's exhibition Saplings,the ningth exhibition of our Artist-Initiated Projects programme.

Saplings presents a site-specific installation of new sculptural works by Sibyl Montague. It features a series of sculptural objects or 'tools' that explore our relationship to material as physical but flawed representations of inner experience. Based on a speakeasy that Montague's grandfather worked and drank at in New York in the 1920's, the installation takes the physical bar as form and support for the work.

Biographies:

Sibyl Montague is Dublin base artist. Her practice includes sculpture, video and installation. A graduate of Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, she is recent laureate of the Institut Français Residency Programme at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France (2017). Additional awards include Emerging Visual Artist Award, Wexford Arts Centre (2012) and Oriel Davies Open, Wales (2011). Her moving image work was commissioned for the collection of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania. Montague is co-founder and co-curator of PLASTIK, a festival of artists’ moving image in Dublin and is current studio resident at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.

Rachael Gilbourne is a curator based in Dublin. Gilbourne works as Assistant Curator of Exhibitions at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) and also independently, often in collaboration with Kate Strain under the aegis of RGKSKSRG.